I recently found you and your Substack and I'm slowly making my way through your work on here. I love it!
When I was in my twenties, I used to feel restricted by the idea of a timeline. Over the past few years, I’ve realised that I don’t actually want all of the milestones. I’ve slowly learned to unsubscribe from what I don’t want and pursue what I do. Doing this has really helped to ease the pressure of what others expect from me and of what I expect from myself.
Five years ago, I would have said that I’m facing the ‘setting up home’ milestones. What I’m actually doing right now is building a business and getting my health in shape. I might think about setting up home one day, but it’s not on the agenda right now. It feels quite freeing!
As I was reading this I was thinking about the ‘traditional’ milestones of adult life and how they have shifted over the past few decades. Getting married, buying a house and having children in your twenties used to be the done thing – it was for my mum and nan anyway. I’ve noticed that we’re collectively realising that we don’t need to follow the done thing if we don’t want to. But what about the people who do genuinely want these things? I have friends who are ready to get married and grow a family, but financial instability doesn’t allow for it (no matter how hard they work). The life that our grandparents and parents once built is, in some cases, totally inaccessible for us today. Shifting timelines isn’t a bad thing at all, but it saddens me that (due to the current economic situation) some people feel the choice has been taken away from them for now.
Hi Hayley, it's so great to be in touch with you. I loved reading this perspective. The intergenerational contrasting of 'timelines' is so interesting. I suppose there is always 'progress' (or at least there would have been between our mothers and grandmothers) but it's sped up a crazy amount – I always think about how women couldn't have bank accounts outside of a man's name before 1975, just as one example. So it really is our generation that it has changed for.
But then, on the flip side, so many people will legitimately still subscribe to those milestones – the 'acceptable' ones – and yet we've somehow created a society/financial landscape where they are so widely inaccessible – the irony! It's such an interesting time in socio-economic history and I'm looking forward to reading The Blocks and seeing how you explore that.
Francesca x
p.s. just read you've worked as a Spanish translator among other amazing things – what a dream job!
Hi Francesca, it's great to be in touch with you too. You're right. We have more freedom and opportunity than ever before. We're lucky in many ways. The world is at our feet, yet there are still lots of barriers to break down. It's such a strange time and I'm certainly enjoying delving into it.
I spent ten years as a Spanish translator and subtitler – I loved it! Other things started to call me so I decided to move on and see what happens. Funnily enough the realisation of wanting to move on came from some really good alonement.
I recently found you and your Substack and I'm slowly making my way through your work on here. I love it!
When I was in my twenties, I used to feel restricted by the idea of a timeline. Over the past few years, I’ve realised that I don’t actually want all of the milestones. I’ve slowly learned to unsubscribe from what I don’t want and pursue what I do. Doing this has really helped to ease the pressure of what others expect from me and of what I expect from myself.
Five years ago, I would have said that I’m facing the ‘setting up home’ milestones. What I’m actually doing right now is building a business and getting my health in shape. I might think about setting up home one day, but it’s not on the agenda right now. It feels quite freeing!
As I was reading this I was thinking about the ‘traditional’ milestones of adult life and how they have shifted over the past few decades. Getting married, buying a house and having children in your twenties used to be the done thing – it was for my mum and nan anyway. I’ve noticed that we’re collectively realising that we don’t need to follow the done thing if we don’t want to. But what about the people who do genuinely want these things? I have friends who are ready to get married and grow a family, but financial instability doesn’t allow for it (no matter how hard they work). The life that our grandparents and parents once built is, in some cases, totally inaccessible for us today. Shifting timelines isn’t a bad thing at all, but it saddens me that (due to the current economic situation) some people feel the choice has been taken away from them for now.
Hi Hayley, it's so great to be in touch with you. I loved reading this perspective. The intergenerational contrasting of 'timelines' is so interesting. I suppose there is always 'progress' (or at least there would have been between our mothers and grandmothers) but it's sped up a crazy amount – I always think about how women couldn't have bank accounts outside of a man's name before 1975, just as one example. So it really is our generation that it has changed for.
But then, on the flip side, so many people will legitimately still subscribe to those milestones – the 'acceptable' ones – and yet we've somehow created a society/financial landscape where they are so widely inaccessible – the irony! It's such an interesting time in socio-economic history and I'm looking forward to reading The Blocks and seeing how you explore that.
Francesca x
p.s. just read you've worked as a Spanish translator among other amazing things – what a dream job!
Hi Francesca, it's great to be in touch with you too. You're right. We have more freedom and opportunity than ever before. We're lucky in many ways. The world is at our feet, yet there are still lots of barriers to break down. It's such a strange time and I'm certainly enjoying delving into it.
I spent ten years as a Spanish translator and subtitler – I loved it! Other things started to call me so I decided to move on and see what happens. Funnily enough the realisation of wanting to move on came from some really good alonement.
Hayley x